Slavery, Constitution and War (Letter to A. G. Hodges)

My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other
day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not
remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the
Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment
and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office
without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and
break the oath in using the power.

"I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade
me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I
had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I
have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on
slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best
of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that
government--that nation--of which that constitution was the organic law.

"Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general
law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a
life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of
the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this
ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even
tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should
permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together.

"When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade
it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen.
Cameron, then secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I
did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted
military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable
necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive
appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the
indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come,
unless averted by that measure.

"They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the
alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying
strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for
greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of
trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular
sentiment, none in our white military force,--no loss by it any how or any where. On the
contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and
laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We
have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

"And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing
down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next,
that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and
placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his
case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth."

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt
no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess
plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the
nations condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God
alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a
great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay
fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to
attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. Yours truly